Over at SERoundtable there has been a discussion regarding the new yellow background for advertisements within AdWords. Not only has the color been changed, but the configuration of the ads has been altered so that users have to click directly on each ad, rather than anywhere within the ad block display. These changes were launched on April 6.
Has the new yellow background, or new configuration, been hindering click-through-rates or overall click traffic? I ran a few reports for multiple clients who have ad groups with an average position of 3 or higher. Clicks have remained steady and below are our stats for our CTRs for multiple clients. I can say with some certainty that the AdWords display changes have not had any major negative affects on our campaigns. A few ad groups have seen a CTR increase but keep in mind that we work on our campaigns everyday so we may have mitigated any negative effects from the display changes by continuously optimizing our ads.
In conclusion, we have not seen any substantial shift in our AdWords performance due to the color and configuration alterations. The peaks and valleys displayed in these stats are our normal web traffic trends.
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